A large amount of jewelry is manufactured and sold around the world every year. As is well known, there is unfortunately a large amount of jewelry theft as well. Thus the importance of jewelry identification is clearly understood. By being able to identify a piece of jewelry, it may be possible to return lost or stolen jewelry to the rightful owner. In addition, many large jewelry stores offer repair services at little or no cost to purchasers of jewelry. Unfortunately, unscrupulous persons often try to cheat the store by bringing jewelry for repair which was not purchased at the store and which does not have a repair guarantee. Again, the ability to identify jewelry can prevent such costly cheating.
Apparatus and methods for identification of jewelry are well known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,379,102 to Takeuchi, describes a system for identifying jewels including an automatic microscope, automatic image-analyzing apparatus, electric-resistance measuring apparatus, weighing apparatus, spectroscopic-analysis apparatus, and electronic information processing apparatus. The microscope forms an enlarged image of an identification number marked on a jewel to be identified. The image-analyzing apparatus receives the image of the identification number from the microscope and analyzes it. Additional identification information data is measured and processed, including electrical resistance between two reference points on the jewel, specific gravity of the jewel, and spectrum of reflected light from the jewel. The identification mark may be photo-etched on the jewel.
Other US Patents which deal generally with jewel identification include U.S. Pat. No. 1,700,497 to Heitzler, U.S. Pat. No. 1,799,604 to Read, U.S. Pat. No. 3,740,142 to Takubo, U.S. Pat. No. 3,947,120 to Bar-Issac et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,012,141 to Hanneman, U.S. Pat. No. 4,125,770 to Lang, U.S. Pat. No. 4,200,506 to Dreschhoff et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,316,385 to DeVries et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,467,172 to Ehrenwald et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,799,786 to Gerrard, U.S. Pat. No. 4,900,147 to Bowley et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,119,181 to Yifrach et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,124,935 to Wallner et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,410,125 to Winston et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,485,312 to Horner et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,828,405 to Vanier et al.